1. Field of the Invention:
The present invention relates generally to the cutting of an elongate material such as a surface fastener, a slide fastener chain, an ornamental tape, or an elongate piece of cloth, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for cutting a chain of longitudinally joined elongate materials into pieces of a desired length.
2. Prior Art:
In general, elongate products such as surface fasteners, slide fastener chains, ornamental tapes, or elongate pieces, of cloth are stored and processed in the form of a chain composed of a series of such elongate products joined end to end. For the production of pieces of a desired length from the chain, it is customary to feed the chain stepwise along a path by an intermittently operative feed unit and then to sever the chain successively into pieces of the desired length by a cutting unit while the feed unit is inoperative. This synchronous operation of the feed unit with the cutting unit is interrupted each time a joint portion between two adjacent elongate products arrives at a detector disposed on the path. Upon detection of the joint portion, the chain is pulled forwardly by an operator until the detected joint portion is located downstream of the cutting unit which is then operated to remove a piece including the joint portion. Thereafter, the feed and cutting units resume their synchronous operation.
Due to the frequent interruption of the synchronous feeding and cutting operation and also due to the manual chain feeding, the aforesaid conventional practice is ineffective, low in productivity, laborious and time-comsuming. With the manual chain feeding, the severed pieces having the joint portions tend to have non-uniform lengths which would increase a loss of material.